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During the morning rush hour, five members of the Aum Shinrikyo apocalyptic cult boarded commuter trains headed for the center of Tokyo. Each attacker carried two or three plastic bags of liquid sarin that were wrapped in newspaper. The perpetrators set the packages down, punctured them with umbrella points, and then rushed out to waiting getaway cars.

The New York Times reported, “As trains pulled into stations, passengers staggered out onto the platforms and collapsed. Emergency workers set up tents outside subway stations, and passengers were carried out on stretchers and lay on the ground with bubbles coming from their mouths. In some cases blood poured from their noses.”

The Japanese authorities said the gas attacks affected about 15 different subway stations. “This is a case of organized and indiscriminate murder,” Masahiro Terao, a senior police official, said at a hastily called news conference.

Twelve people were killed that day and another man died the following day. The number of injured has been estimated as high as 5,000, and a recent police survey has raised the number to over 6,200 people.

The attack “showed the world just how easy it is for a small cult or group of terrorists with limited means to engage in chemical warfare,” says the Council on Foreign Relations. “It illustrated that groups not affiliated with rogue states posed a great national security risk.”

Haruki Murakami’s book “Underground” collects interviews with survivors, the victims' relatives and the cultists responsible for the day’s terrible events.

Aum Shinrikyo, meaning “Supreme Truth,” was founded in the 1980s by Matsumoto Chizuo, who became known to his followers as Shoko Asahara. It began as a yoga class taught by the half-blind Asahara, who combined Buddhist, Hindu and Christian teachings and preached that the end of the world was near. By 1995, the cult had an estimated 10,000 members in Japan and 65,000 members worldwide.

In 1989, a lawyer who was threatening to expose the cult was murdered by Aum Shinrikyo followers. In the early ‘90s, Aum Shinrikyo began developing chemical weapons; between 1990 and 1995, it carried out 10 chemical attacks and seven biological attacks “with motivation ranging from assassination to mass murder,” according to the Monterey WMD Terrorism Database.

The cult’s criminal actions would not be uncovered until the 1995 Tokyo attack, though authorities had been alerted in 1993 that there was a smell of toxic gas around the Aum Shinrikyo compound. In June 1994, a cloud of sarin gas from the compound killed seven people and injured hundreds of others; the police and media, however, suspected that the man who first called authorities about the cloud was the culprit.

After the Tokyo attack, authorities cracked down on the cult. They arrested Asahara and hundreds of other leaders, seized cult property, and stripped it of its religious recognition. Asahara and about a dozen other cult members have been sentenced to death, though none have been executed yet.

Japan has not outlawed the Aum Shinrikyo sect, but authorities closely monitor it. The sect, which changed its name to Aleph, formally apologized for the attack in 2000 and says that none of its current members were “directly involved in the incidents.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sarin is a “human-made chemical warfare agent” that over-stimulates the muscles and organs, interfering with the nervous system. This nerve agent is a “clear, colorless, and tasteless liquid,” though it can turn into a gas. Symptoms may occur seconds after exposure. Although individuals moderately exposed to sarin are likely to fully recover, severe exposure normally leads to death.

A drop of sarin can be deadly within minutes, and it is over “500 times as toxic as cyanide,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The sarin used in the 1995 Japanese attacks was not particularly lethal, however, and poorly released. Saddam Hussein revealed that Iraq had 790 tons of sarin gas in 1995, and he used sarin on the Kurdish people in 1987 and 1988.